Asphalt as an important building material, has been widely used in the field of road construction, water-proof material and so on. However, it has a bad resistance to UV ageing, which easily lead to the destruction of the molecular structure, consequently cracks, ruts, pits, peeling and other problems for asphalt pavement, and seriously impact on the asphalt pavement performance, such as service life and road safety. Besides, asphalt waterproof material always is hardened under UV light, and difficult to adapt the low temperature in winter. In the end shrinkage and cracking of the roof was caused, resulting in the damage of the waterproof layer, and roof leaks. Therefore, it is urgent to improve the UV-ageing resistance properties of asphalt.
A variety of stabilizers used in the rubber, plastics and other polymer material didn't demonstrate obvious anti-ageing effect on asphalt. The reason contribute to the complex molecular structure of asphalt with thousands of organic compounds, and the different UV ageing mechanism compared with the general organic polymer material.
Reference (J. Xu, J. Yuan, C. Bao, J. Cheng, UV aging studies of the road asphalt and modified asphalt, Petroleum Asphalt, 2008, 22(6): 43-47) has reported the preparation of anti-UV ageing asphalt based on thermoplastic styrene-butadiene rubber (SBS). The results show that the SBS can largely improve the performance of asphalt, but the UV anti-ageing ability of the modified asphalt is the same as road asphalt, or even worse.